1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to portable terminals. More particularly, the present invention relates to a keypad, a sliding module and a flexible circuit which can reduce the overlapping space between two housings of a portable terminal, thereby ensuring more usable space for input/output devices of the portable terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a “portable terminal” is an appliance for providing wireless communication between users, or between a user and a service provider via, for instance, a mobile communication base station. A portable terminal provides a user with various services, for example, voice communication services, short message service (SMS), mobile banking, television viewing, on-line games, and video on demand (VOD).
Portable terminals may be classified into bar-type terminals, flip-type terminals, and folder-type terminals according to their appearance. A bar-type terminal has input/output devices such as a communication circuit, sender, receiver, etc. mounted in a single housing. A flip-type terminal has a flip cover mounted to a bar-type terminal. A folder-type terminal has a pair of housings exposed or covered by relative pivoting, in which input/output devices are placed on one of the housings. Other types of terminals, such as swing-type terminals, have also appeared on the market. Swing-type terminals and folder-type terminals help satisfy the various tastes of users while having increased portability and convenience of use.
In the early stages of mobile communication, mobile communication services were limited to voice communication and short message transmission. As mobile communication has developed, services has gradually expanded to include transmission of games, music and moving picture files, on-line services, multimedia services, and so on.
The increased diversification of mobile communication services has led to an increased diversification of the functions performed by a portable terminal together. The increased diversification of services has also increased the diversification of the design (that is, appearance) of the portable terminal as input/output devices capable of sufficiently utilizing the diversified functions are added to the portable terminal.
Due to design restrictions on portable terminals, there are limitations in mounting the various input/output devices within the limited space of the portable terminal. There are also limitations with respect to including additional input/output devices to accommodate additional functions.
Further, the conventional portable terminal is constructed so that when two housings are opposite to each other, one housing slides on the other housing in one direction, and is exposed up to about half of the length of the other housing. For this reason, the entire area of the portable terminal cannot be used, which imposes restrictions on the installation of keys, liquid crystal displays (LCD), and the like.
Accordingly, there is a need for a portable terminal with an improved input/output device configuration.